Race to the Sea

The Race to the Sea was a campaign of the Western Front of World War I which lasted from 17 September to 19 October 1914 when the Entente armies of Britain, France, and Belgium raced north following the First Battle of the Marne, pursuing the Imperial German Army as it embarked on a 65-mile retreat north. The campaign resulted in a series of outflanking attempts and battles which all ended indecisively; ultimately, the two sides dug in and readied for four years of static trench warfare in northern France and southern Flanders.

Background
On the Western Front, the first six weeks of the war had been dramatic but indecisive, leaving both side options for offensive operations. Despite the Allied victory at the Marne, German troops controlled a large area of northeastern France and Belgium. The Belgian Army had withdrawn inside a defensive perimeter around Antwerp. Fighting along France's eastern borders subsided, but battle raged at the city of Reims, retaken by the French after a brief German occupation on 12 September. The French fortress of Maubeuge fell after a two-week siege on 8 September. German armies retreating from the Marne had orders to stand at the Aisne River, but this left open space to be exploited between the Aisne and the coast.

Campaign
Pursuing a supposedly defeated enemy northward in the second week in September, French and British commanders were in an optimistic mood. They estimated that it would take their advancing forces from three weeks to a month to reach Belgium's border with Germany. But they did not know that the outgoing German Chief of General Staff, General Helmuth von Moltke, had ordered his armies to fortify and defend a line along the Aisne River.

Battle of the Aisne
When Allied troops reached the Aisne on 12 September, they found the Germans entrenched on the Chemin des Dames ridge, easily defensible heights on the far side of the river. Determined to maintain the rhythm of their advance, the British and French attacked immediately. Under heavy shelling from the German guns, they found a precarious way across bridges partially destroyed by German engineers or built their own pontoon bridges over the broad river, which was swollen by heavy rain. Once they were on the other side, Allied infantry mounted uphill assaults against the German lines and were repeatedly driven back by German firepower.

The Germans followed up with their own counterattacks, but these proved equally unsuccessful as Allied troops dug in. Soon, two lines of trenches faced one another immovably - the start of the trench system that would eventually extend from Switzerland to the coast. At Reims, the armies were equally stuck, with the French holding the city but suffering under a heavy German bombardment, which devastated the city's cathedral. Neither French commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre, nor Moltke's replacement as German Chief of the General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, was interested in accepting a stalemate. The country was almost empty of troops north from the Aisne to the coast, and both commanders hastened to assemble forces for an outflanking move into this inviting space. They transferred troops from other sectors - chiefly the now largely dormant front line along France's eastern border - and flung them forward in a series of offensives, each of which met the enemy head on.

Clashes in northern France
Once troops entrenched, no progress could be made and a new flanking maneuver had to be attempted farther north. The French came close to a major defeat at Arras, but held firm after General Ferdinand Foch, put in overall command in the northern sector, issued the order "No retirement; every man to the battle." Making aggressive use of massed cavalry divisions, the Germans captured Lille in early October. Meanwhile, the British Expeditionary Force was moved by train to the far left of the Allied line. Advancing toward Lille, it ran into German cavalry at La Bassee. While infantry and cavalry clashed in northern France, the Belgians, led in person by King Albert I, were engaged in a desperate defense of Antwerp. From 28 September, the Germans mounted a major attack on the fortified city. Their array of heavy siege guns had the same effect as at Liege, Namur, and Maubeuge, and battered Antwerp's fortresses to destruction.

As the defense wavered, Britain sent the Naval Division to Antwerp to bolster Belgian morale, and a British infantry division landed at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, traveled to Antwerp to persuade the Belgians to continue resistance. It was in vain. The city's defenses were penetrated and on 9 October the king and his government left for the coastal town of Ostende. Antwerp surrendered to the Germans the following day. Most of the Belgian Army escaped to continue the fight at the Yser River.

Aftermath
The Race to the Sea culminated in the First Battle of Ypres, fought from mid-October to late November. Beginning while fighting raged to the north at the Battle of the Yser and to the south at La Basse, intensive combat at Ypres continued until the third week in November. With neither side able to make a breakthrough, this ended the first mobile phase of the war on the Western Front. Joffre launched another offensive in Champagne in December, but no further substantial movement could be achieved by either side. The trenches that were dug by troops at various points in these battles were gradually joined together to create a continuous trench line.